Something To Believe In
by Specificitydarling
Summary: There was no running away from it, but there was dancing around it." Set after bones comes back from Peru, a sequel to my story PERSUASION-but you don't have to read that one . Reviews are love! May be continued, depending on what you guys think!


8 days in Peru and 4 hours on a plane is a very long time. Especially when it was raining the whole time and now you're sitting next to someone who likes to talk about baseball. Especially when the only thing on your mind isn't bones or baseball.

It's been 8 days since she got the nervous- belly-flop- butterflies- weak knees- euphoria feeling, And it hasn't really gone away. He's called, but she never picked up. Choosing to listen to his messages in the middle of the night when she couldn't sleep. The stars are surprisingly clearer in Peru than in DC, though cloudless night were rare. She often found connecting the dots and turning them into images. Tibia. Vertebra. Dolphin. Booth.

She rereads the flight menu three times, although the only things they offer are sandwiches and juice. For not-the-first-time she hears Angela's voice in her head, pointing out the obvious-yet- feared facts. Not that she'd admit it, but she wishes for a sign.

The seatbelt sign flashes on and the pilot announces they are landing soon. Please put up your tray-tables and place your seats upright. She sighed and the man next to her asked her if she was ok, noting that fatigue can be detrimental to your game. She nodded and smiled and wished she had her gun. Or Booth's. Or just Booth.

Customs took forever, as she explained for the seventh time to the third person why exactly she was carrying half a skeleton into the United States. Apparently, forensic anthropologist with The FBI means nothing to them. Neither does being Special Agents Seeley Booth's partner. Partner. That's one way of looking at it.

She swings the heavy carry-on over her shoulder and makes her way to Arrivals. She watches people hugging and kissing and smiling and laughing. People who haven't seen each other for years or months or days. People who missed and loved and lived.

Then she saw him. She stopped for a moment, stared at him as he stared back. There was no going anywhere. There was no running away. There was either building the wall or crossing the line.

She got closer eventually and they gave each other a smile which spoke volumes but neither could really speak the language.

"Welcome back Bones."

"Booth."

He took her bag off her shoulder and slung it over his own, its heaviness not taking any apparent effect on him. Her posture relaxed a bit, and she began to follow him to his car.

"I never told you when I was coming back." She noted, as they walked.

He flashed her a smile, "I work for the FBI, Bones."

She grinned back, and they reached his car in no time at all.

There was no running away from it, but there was dancing around it.

A slow ballad floated from the speakers throughout the car. Otherwise, it was quiet. There were no debates on religion, no ethical right and wrongs. No corrections made by her or morals taught by him. Instead, their usual clashing was replaced by their slow breathing, thoughts screaming out loud. She thought about herself before she knew him, and honestly couldn't remember much. Living for so long without his constant presence, without his grins and definite alpha-male tendencies seemed implausible. Like chemicals, their reaction had transformed both of them.

She never told him she had gone on to research Scully and Mulder, her ever-inquisitive mind wanting to know exactly who he had compared them to. She couldn't sleep for days after finding out the extent of their partnership. And Booth had yet to be proved wrong.

He drove her to the lab to drop of the bones she had brought back with her, and after insistence on her part, he drove her home. She didn't put up much of a fight. She was tired and she still had too much of one thing on her mind to actually work.

"Are you hungry?" he asked after a while. She had expected him to say something; his mouth had been forming shapes for the past quarter of an hour.

"Thai?" she suggested and grinned when he glanced in her direction. He laughed and nodded. A song he obviously liked came on the radio and she watched him hum along out of the corner of her eye. She remembered elevators and fridge-bombs.

When the song ended he used his cell to order takeouts to her apartment. She closed her eyes and listened to the ease he used with her address and phone number. Just as he had with her password. He knew her.

He held her bag patiently as she unlocked her door and stepped into the home she hadn't been in for a week. It was dark and dusty, but still the same. She thought it bared some resemblance to their relationship.

She told him to put her bag down on the floor, that she'd unpack it later, and apologised for the lack of drinks. She was flicking through the post when he said her name. Bones, not Temperance. She turned around and he was much closer than he'd sounded, much more sombre too.

"You said we'd talk." He said.

Her breathing hitched, because she remembered what she'd meant by that. That whole episode was still so vivid in her mind. After all, it had been the sole occupant of it for 8 days.

She nodded slowly, and stared at him for a moment. Thoughts and ideas and hopes and fears all buzzing around like a racecourse, none of them making much sense at all. But she was pretty sure, that one thing seemed clearer than when she had left it.

She raised her head a little to show that she still meant what she meant a week ago.

Turns out, there wasn't much dancing. That line was crossed a long time before any running or dancing was even an option.

Her body was pressed flushed against his while their lips danced together. His arms wrapped around her waist, and her around his neck. And it was so different from the one at the lab. It was slow and steady as if they both knew they had all the time in the world. Yet neither of them knew anything at all. Maybe sometimes, hearts are wiser than they seem. Because while her mind rushed around trying to make sense of things, trying to organise and categorise and rationalise, her heart synchronised with his. They stood there, long after their lips parted, catching their breath and their thoughts.

The doorbell rang, and she didn't really feel like Thai anymore, but she went and opened it anyway. When she brought it back into the living room, he had already sat himself down on her couch. Shesat down next to him and handed him a couple of boxes. They ate in silence for a while. Their minds far, far away from Thai food. She glanced at him and he grinned and she couldn't stop a smile.

She wasn't one for romance; it was an overused tradition, like marriage and Christmas. And she didn't believe in love. It was purely hormones, a chemical reaction in the brain that had nothing to do with the heart. She did, however, believe in Booth. She sat with him in her living room, eating Thai takeout. Expecting more of what came before to happen after. She believed in them. And _there_ was her sign.


End file.
